It is a truth universally acknowledged that the book women feel has most transformed their lives is the one that has assured them for the past two centuries that, yes, they will marry the wealthy, handsome man next door and live happily ever after.

Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen's salty-tongued commentary on the plight of women in the 19th century, perhaps best known today for providing Colin Firth with the opportunity to pose in a wet shirt in front of many grateful viewers, has won the Women's Watershed Fiction poll, it was announced yesterday on Radio 4's Woman's Hour.

Despite being specifically about women's lives 200 years ago, the relevance of Austen's classic has not diminished, according to the 14,000 voters who took part in the poll, 93% of whom were women. It is, according to the poll, the novel that "has spoken to you on a personal level; it may have changed the way you look at yourself, or simply made you happy to be a woman".

Harper Lee's semi-autobiographical tale of racial prejudice in the American deep south, To Kill a Mockingbird, came second, despite the fact that the main female character, Scout, is a child, and that the only major adult female character in the novel is one who falsely cries rape against an innocent man.

The other runners-up were, in descending order, Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, The Women's Room by Marilyn French and Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale.

The poll was run by the literary critic Lisa Jardine, while the novelists Sarah Dunant, Marina Warner, Monica Ali, Jenny Colgan and Jill Dawson spoke out in support of the chosen top five on yesterday's programme.

However, female solidarity in support of the choices has not been universal.

The journalist and writer Julie Burchill was particularly scathing about the chosen top five, her main point of contention being that "if Jane Austen heard women today talking about clitorises she'd faint ... I can't see why Pride and Prejudice would make one feel proud to be a woman. If the question was, which book makes you proud to wear an empire line dress, then I could understand it".

The more overtly feminist choices - "the slash your wrist corner", according to Burchill - were given equally short shrift.

The writer Suzanne Moore similarly questioned Austen's relevance to 21st-century women, albeit with slightly less specific and descriptive objections: "I can't see how it changed women's lives, it just confirmed what they were meant to be. It is a great book, but it's about how women have to shape themselves within social conventions."

However, the author Helen Simpson, whose book Hey Yeah Right Get a Life has been acclaimed for its startlingly realistic depiction of modern motherhood, praised the winning choice: "Pride and Prejudice is inspiring because the pitch is so perfect," she said.

The psychotherapist Susie Orbach professed surprise at the final list - "Where are the young women?" - but said women's continuing weakness for the happy ending with a wedding wasn't a shock: "There is still all of this longing in our psychology. We want these lovely redemptive romantic endings, to be seen and understood, but within the confines of femininity."

Nevertheless, perhaps the most striking feature of the list is how all of the authors are white and none of the books was written later than 1986. "It's not very multicultural, is it?" added Dr Orbach.

As with any poll, the temptation is to try to draw some conclusion about today's world.

Simpson said there was one factor that united the top five: "All of these books feature characters who are in some way second-class citizens, yet are spirited and uncompromising in their search for freedom and, in some cases, love as well. They aren't victims, but they do have to struggle in society."

Birchill questioned the value of any poll about women's literature: "I think if people had been hooked up to lie detectors the winner would have been Jackie Collins."

Inspiring? The runners-up

2. To Kill a Mockingbird

Harper Lee's only novel is a quasi-autobiographical depiction of her childhood in the Deep South. Focusing on the adventures of the young girl Scout, her brother Jem and their friend Dill, the book depicts the bitter racism that Lee saw as a child. Scout's father, Atticus Finch, defends an innocent black man against accusations of rape by a white woman.

3. Jane Eyre

Is this a tale of a repressed, dependent woman who ultimately marries her tyrannical employer? Or is it a groundbreaking work, full of metaphorical allusions to a woman embracing her sexuality? Whichever reading you subscribe to, Charlotte Brontë's novel is an odd choice for a book that makes women "feel proud to be a woman".

4. The Women's Room

Hugely influential when it was published in 1977, Marilyn French's book now reads more as a fascinating period piece than as a timeless feminist tome. It depicts the joyless marriage between a middle-class woman and her bullying husband, and includes the infamous line "all men are rapists, they rape us with their eyes, their laws, their codes".

5. The Handmaid's Tale

Margaret Atwood's satiric novel depicts a society in which women are forced to have miserable sex with men they dislike and are forbidden from having jobs or owning any property. Quite how this book makes any woman feel proud to be a woman or changes the way she looks at herself is something to ponder.